The DBIA’s project/team awards honor the nation’s best design-build projects and leaders. Designed by GGLO and constructed by Absher, the Elson S. Floyd Cultural Center won two of the event’s highest honors: the Chairman’s Award and the Excellence in Design—Architecture Award. The Chairman’s Award for Community Impact and Social Responsibility recognizes design-build teams that have shown extraordinary commitment to triple bottom line success — economic, environmental and social — which have clearly improved the communities they’ve engaged. Additionally, the project was awarded a National Award of Merit in educational facilities.

DBIA Executive Director and CEO Lisa Washington explained the gravity of all project team winners on the awards website, “This year’s National Design-Build Project/Team Award winners prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that design-build is changing the way America builds and delivers impressive results in communities from coast to coast… DBIA is proud to honor these design-build project award winners for leading the way and showing the nation there’s a better way to build.”

Speaking to the Absher/GGLO partnership for the Cultural Center, GGLO Principal Mark Sindell said, “Fundamentally, our team was knowledgeable of both the differences and benefits of this delivery method. With that as the foundation of the team, in concert with the unified buy-in of the higher purpose of the project, we were able to consistently trust each other and work collaboratively with the best interest of the project always at the forefront.”

“We did all kinds of things that you would never get the opportunity to do if all you did was take a set of documents and put a bid to it,” noted Absher Project Executive, Rich Wells.